It is known in the prior art to provide flight information access via a web server. The inventors herein pioneered a system that is available at the URL www.flightview.com. We describe in this paragraph, and the following two paragraphs, the web server at this URL. The web server at this URL permits a user, for example, to identify a flight (by, among other things, specifying the airline, flight number and date) and, for the flight thus identified, to access from the server an estimated time of arrival of the flight based on live FAA flight data. This web server also permits the user to monitor progress of the flight in real time (assuming that the aircraft has taken off), among other things by watching a graphical display, which is dynamically updated, of the geographical position of the aircraft on a map.
If the aircraft has not taken off, the web server returns a static web page with information that the aircraft has not taken off. The web server also permits the user to cause the server to send a message, via e-mail to a specified e-mail address, containing a link to a static web page permitting access to flight information for a selected flight.
The web server also provides information concerning airport flight delay conditions, in the manner described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,120,537, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.